Archives for the 'E-Government & Transparency' Category
E-voting
xkcd has outdone themselves once again:
McCain’s Tech Policy a Mixed Bag at Best
Braden has noted the release of John McCain’s tech policy–rightly decrying McCain’s socialistic community broadband concept. But far more outrageous, in my view is this bit of doublethink. First, the good part we should all applaud:
John McCain Has Fought to Keep the Internet Free From Government Regulation
The role of government in the Innovation Age should be focused on creating opportunities for all Americans and maintaining the vibrancy of the Internet economy. Given the enormous benefits we have seen from a lightly regulated Internet and software market, our government should refrain from imposing burdensome regulation. John McCain understands that unnecessary government intrusion can harm the innovative genius of the Internet. Government should have to prove regulation is needed, rather than have entrepreneurs prove it is not.
Amen! Even a hardened Ron Paul/Bob Taft/Grover Cleveland/Jack Randolph-survivalist/libertarian-crank like me can rally behind that banner. But then this self-styled champion of deregulation pulls a really fast one:
John McCain Will Preserve Consumer Freedoms. John McCain will focus on policies that leave consumers free to access the content they choose; free to use the applications and services they choose; free to attach devices they choose, if they do not harm the network; and free to chose among broadband service providers.
That sure sounds nice, but it’s all Wu-vian code for re-regulation, not de-regulation. You might recognize that McCain is talking obliquely here about the FCC’s 1968 Carterfone doctrine, which has consumed much attention on the TLF (see this piece in particular).
McCain then insists that he will be a bold leader for “good” regulations: Continue reading this post »
e-Passports are Insecure
Sometimes, items come across my desk(top) that are almost too obvious to make note of, but it’s probably worthwhile to highlight the e-passport.
Adam Laurie and Jeroen van Beek, at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, showed the Business Technology Blog how to capture and change information stored on chips included in new passports from many countries. . . . Laurie showed us his son’s British passport, in which he embedded a chip that displays Osama Bin Laden’s photograph. The passports have a key needed to access the electronic information, but it is taken from information found in the passport like the date of birth. Laurie was able in about four hours to decipher the key and use an RFID scanner to steal the digital information from a passport contained in a sealed envelope.
The State Department implemented the e-passport with no sense of the ends it was trying to achieve. Naturally, the means it chose weren’t well suited.
Though I don’t think you’re going to cost-effectively stop or slow terrorism at the borders, Customs and Border Patrol may be less able to interdict bad people at the borders because of the e-passport misadventure.
10,000 Bills in Congress, and the Annual Spending Process Ignored
Before leaving for its August recess last week, Congress saw the introduction of its 10,000th bill. Meanwhile, not a single one of the twelve annual bills that direct the government’s spending priorities in 2009 has passed the Senate and only one has passed the House. Congress is neglecting its basic responsibility to manage the federal government, and is instead churning out new legislation about everything under the sun.
What does Congress occupy itself with? A commemorative postage stamp on the subject of inflammatory bowel disease. Improbable claims of health care for all Americans. And, of course, bringing home pork. Read about it on the WashingtonWatch.com blog.
Can Congress tweet? Should bloggers care?
Continuing my campaign to bring attention to congressional web use rules, I have an article up at Ars Technica today. Bottom line:
Although the partisan tensions have now subsided a bit, the greater problem persists. Culberson’s use of video-sharing and microblogging technology continues to violate House rules. So do Speaker Pelosi’s YouTube channel, Digg profile, Flickr page, and Facebook profile. The new rules proposed by Capuano and supported by Pelosi would not authorize these uses. In contrast, alternative rules (PDF) proposed by the Republican minority would allow members to use any service so long as they comply with existing content rules that prohibit political or commercial endorsements in official communications.
The reason I think this is so important right now is that both the House and the Senate are currently looking to change their rules, and its vital that they get them right. I know the blogosphere knows what the right call is here, they just need to make sure that Congress gets the message. That said,
Since the initial [reaction on the blogs], however, the blogosphere has been relatively silent on the issue, which one imagines should be near and dear to its geek heart. The silence has been especially deafening from bloggers on the political left who are best positioned to influence the House Democratic leadership’s position. Pelosi spoke at this year’s Netroots Nation conference (formerly YearlyKos) and participated in an “Ask the Speaker” session. Not one question, however, related to congressional web use restrictions.
I hope you’ll spread the message about this by blogging about it, Digging the story, and generally spreading the word. This is not a partisan issue, it’s an issue on which all bloggers and technophiles can agree, and it’s definitely an issue that we can win.
The Cost of Regulation
Here’s a blessedly short video introducing the cost of regulation - and its equivalence to taxation. Another reason why this video is so blessed? No Dan Mitchell!
The “Coburn Omnibus”
The WashingtonWatch.com blog has a breakout of all 36 bills in the “Coburn Omnibus.”
#36: a greenhouse in Suitland, Maryland!
“What Matters is Freedom”
This YouTube video nearly brought me to tears. At minute 8:31, Dan Mitchell utters the words, “What matters is freedom” . . . .
Why the tears, though? Because I’d been watching and listening to Dan Mitchell for over eight minutes! You’d cry too.
Might learn something, though. It’s about Social Security taxes or something. And nobody has objected to me putting these videos up. Hey, it’s a new, exciting, “online” way of talking about public policy.
The medium is not the message
Over on the Open House Project blog, John Wonderlich ponders what would sensible web-use rules for members or Congress look like. As I’ve noted here recently, both the House and Senate are looking to update the types of restrictions they place on how their members may use internet technologies. John writes:
The question now before the Franking Commission is how to update what Pelosi and Capuano have both admitted are “antiquated” restrictions. They have to balance legitimate concerns — decorum, commercialization, and improper taxpayer funded political content — against what all involved parties have recognized as immense potential online. … What really constitutes commercial endorsement? When does conduct become unacceptable or undignified? What role should Congress play in enforcing those questions online? Where do the edges of “official duties” lie anyway? Are we treating the Internet differently than we do traditional media?
It seems to me that the first step is to separate message and medium. House and Senate rules should address what is proper and improper content—that is, they should have rules restricting the use of official resources to produce political or commercial messages or content that is undignified (however they want to define that). In fact, they already have such rules. That sort of content regulation, however, should be completely separate from restrictions on the medium used to transmit the message. As long as a member stays within the content rules, the medium should not matter.
Memo to Congress: We can handle new media
As Cord noted here a week ago, a letter from Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) suggesting changes to Congress’s rules governing how members may post videos to the Internet stirred a firestorm of commentary that culminated in a letter from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a New York Times article, an NPR story, and a petition effort from the Sunlight Foundation that can be found at www.LetOurCongressTweet.com. The fact that this brouhaha sparked so much activity is a sign of how important this topic is, and now that the dust has settled a bit we can look at the issue more calmly.
Despite suggestions to the contrary during the initial frenzy, the fact is that the proposed amendments would affect only video and not Twitter or blogging. Also, the proposal, which limits pretty severely where House members may post video, is actually a loosening of current rules. It’s understandable why some folks who are sensitive about online transparency pounced on this like they did, but it’s important to get the facts straight.
That said, it’s an absolute embarrassment that current House rules restrict how representatives link to outside websites. For example, I’ve talked to staff who say that while they would like to link to their member’s constantly updated voting record on GovTrack.us or the Washington Post’s Congress Votes Database, they won’t for fear of violating House rules. (The Open House Project’s report on member web-use restrictions explains in detail how the rules that govern the web and email are based on regulations developed for snail mail.)
To me, what should be the issue is the rationale for the regulations. For example, the rules proposed by Rep. Capuano would allow members to post video to outside hosting services so long as “the official content [is] not be posted on a website or page where it may appear with commercial or political information[.]” The reason seems to be that commercial or political messages anywhere in the vicinity of the official video clip would taint the “dignity, propriety, and decorum of the House.” Capuano explains in a follow-up statement:
Apparently the Republicans spreading these lies would rather operate without rules and open the House to commercialism. Maybe they don’t care if an official video appears next to a political advertisement for Barack Obama or John McCain, creating the appearance of an endorsement. And I guess they don’t care if constituents clicking on their videos will be treated to commercials for anything you can imagine, from the latest Hollywood blockbuster to Viagra. Certainly, advertisements are a reality in today’s world and most people can distinguish. However, it is also a reality that Members of Congress who use taxpayer money to communicate with constituents should be held to the highest possible standard of independence — and the appearance of independence.
DownsizeDC Ramps Up
. . . it’s new Web site.
This blog post details all they’ve been doing.
Is Open Government Anti-Corporate?
Via Ellen Miller, I came to a post on techPresident lamenting corporations’ use of their customer databases to lobby Congress. Zephyr Teachout received an email from United Airlines asking her to go to a petition site which asked her to contact her member of Congress about oil speculation.
This is clearly just the beginning, and its a crude one–a few years from now you’ll see more organizing, including international organizing, to leverage corporate databases to influence policies that help corporate wealth. At least as of 2004, the airlines were among the biggest email/database owners in the country (along with casinos). As someone concerned about concentrated power in any form, this is not a great development.
I don’t think this is the unfortunate story Teachout believes it to be. More important than the fact that a corporation is using information at its disposal to advance its public policy agenda is the fact that the corporation feels obligated to communicate with Congress through the intermediary of its customers (and presumably shareholders). That’s a move in the direction of openness and democracy.
Consider the alternative: corporate officials going to Congress for meetings in smoke-filled rooms - or just showing up with bags of cash. No, there’s a dimension of modern politics that requires them to produce actual voters to support the policies they like. That’s good.
Most large corporations are publicly held so the term “corporate wealth” (assumed bad) refers to the wealth of investors and workers (in retirement funds), which is actually good.
Corporations come in every size and shape, so the formula corporate=bad fails to describe the world well. Corporations sometimes lobby for bad policies just like individuals and government agencies do. I have called out corporations with substantive policy agendas that are bad, and there are plenty. But just because an agenda is “corporate,” it isn’t necessarily bad.
Corporations lobby for freedom of speech (booksellers and publishers); they lobby for policies that keep down the cost of food (importers; agribusiness; grocers); they lobby for wind energy; etc. etc. There’s just no shorthand which holds that corporate interests are bad.
BTW, it sounds like the policies United was pitching Teachout are pretty dumb. Oil “speculation” is a hobgoblin that masks real issues of supply and demand. I hope they fail to win the day - not because they’re corporate; because they’re wrong.
No YouTube for Congress
How does the old saying go? One person’s spam is another person’s blogging fodder? Such was the case today when a colleague forwarded a house GOP “Internet Freedom Alert” to me. According to the alert, Nancy Pelosi and her wicked ilk mean to ban members of Congress from using YouTube to communicate with their constituencies.
The alert, sent by the office of Rep. John Boehner, informs us that house democrats have dredged up an arcane rule and mean to enforce it—after all, this is “the most ethical Congress ever.” The rule, enforced by the Congressional Franking Commission, disallows links to campaign-related website, political parties, advocacy groups and “any site the primary purpose of which is the conduct of commerce.” This means YouTube, replete with its ring tone ads, links John McCain t-shirts, and ads for Barack Obama commemorative neck ties, is a big Congressional no-no.
Congress ought to live by its own rules, but perhaps this one is worth revisiting. Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) seems to think so as well. He sits on the panel that is reforming the rules governing constituent communication and has quite accurately observed that “Technology moves fast. Congress moves slow.”
While that sentence may not be the most grammatically accurate way of stating the case, the Price is right. The alternative for Congress is hosting its own videos or requesting that commecial sites like YouTube build what Washington Post staff writer Jonathan Weisman calls a “government ghetto.”
Putting Politicians First?
Over at the new WashingtonWatch.com blog, I’ve got a new post up called “Putting Politicians First?“.
WashingtonWatch.com Blog Debuts
Happy Fourth of July everyone!
“What better way to celebrate the founding of our nation than . . . um, by . . . blogging?” So begins the introductory post of the new WashingtonWatch.com blog.
The blog will tie the bills in Congress to the day’s headlines, discuss the bills being debated on the House and Senate floor, and reveal some hidden stories. Readers of TLF will understand this line from the opening post all too well: “Oh, there’ll be jokes - and I’m telling you right now they’re not all going to be funny.”
On the more serious side, the first substantive post tells the the inspiring story found on WashingtonWatch.com of an Army NCO who has taken Iraqi interpreters into his home. They served the U.S. military in Iraq and received special visas to come to the United States. He has helped them make their way in the U.S., and awaits three more who are on waiting lists, simply because “it’s the right thing to do.”
Check out the WashingtonWatch.com blog. If you want to subscribe to the RSS feed straight away, it’s here.
-
Welcome.
Search
Categories
- Biotech
- Broadband and Neutrality Regulation
- Competition Policy
- Copyright
- DMCA, DRM, and Piracy
- E-commerce taxation & regulation
- E-Government & Transparency
- First Amendment / free speech
- Inside the Beltway (Politics)
- Internet Governance
- Media Regulation
- Miscellaneous
- Open Source, Open Standards, and Peer Production
- Patents
- Podcast
- Privacy and Government Surveillance
- Sin on the 'Net
- Space
- Tech Pork
- Technology, Business, and Cool Toys
- Telecom and Cable Regulation
- Things that go 'Bump' in the 'Net
- Uncategorized
- What We're Reading
- Wireless and Spectrum Policy
Contributors
Tech Policy
Tech News
Bloggers We Like
Our Sites
Where We Work
-
Sponsors
